10.08.2013

With the gorgeous and terrifying San Juan Mountains behind us, we left our
hotel the next morning for the final stop of our adventure: Mesa Verde National
Park.

Unlike our other rather obscure destinations during the trip—Colorado National
Monument, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, the Million Dollar Highway—Mesa Verde
is actually pretty famous.

You’ve seen pictures of it. At some point you may have even thought: “Hey, that
would be a cool place to visit—someday.”

The top of the mesa is actually pretty boring—just a lot of desert shrubbery
and an occasional old, mostly unexcavated ruin. It’s what’s on the sides of the mesa that counts.

In short, Mesa Verde is the place with all the cliff dwellings you see in
history books and National Geographic. And it doesn’t have just one cliff
dwelling—it has many. At one
particular overlook, you could see five or six separate dwellings on the side
of a sheer cliff.

The coolest part? We were actually able to walk through two of the dwellings
while we were there. The first dwelling, Spruce Tree House, was easy to access—just about a ¼ mile
down a gradual slope to the bottom ravine of sorts—and thus it was quite
crowded with people. Nevertheless, it was a cool experience.

A lot of different thoughts go through your head as you walk through a 1000+
year old town carved into a cliff:

“How did they build this?”
“I can’t believe people actually lived here.”
“Did they really have to climb out of here every day?”
“Wow, I guess these people weren’t afraid of heights.”
“Where did I come from? Where am I going? Are families forever?”
Etc.

The second dwelling we toured was even cooler, and quite a bit more
like what you imagine when you think of cliff dwellings. Whereas Spruce Tree
House was pretty much at ground level, this one was smack dab in the middle of
a sheer cliff face. Due to the relative danger and difficulty of access (at
least for those not used to climbing up steep walls), this one required tickets
and a Park Ranger tour guide.

And since the description labeled this tour as “extreme” and mentioned
things like “multiple climbs up 32 foot ladders” and “squeezing through 12-foot
long crawl spaces,” Mom and Dad decided to stay behind while Heather and I
embarked on this adventure.

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One of the recurring themes of this weekend trip was acrophobia—and this
second tour gave me a chance to re-establish, once again, that I am indeed afraid
of heights.

To get down to the dwelling, you have to walk down a steep, sloping trail carved
into the cliff side. The trail is narrow, and a foot to your left is a steep
thousand foot drop.

Then you have to climb up a 32-foot ladder.

The view from the dwelling

To get back out, you have to crawl on your hands and knees through a very
narrow space and then climb another tall ladder and then walk up some very steep, shallow steps carved into
the cliff. It was all very exciting and stuff.

But while you’re actually in the dwelling, it’s quite cool. The tour guide
told us a lot about the day-to-day lives and religious beliefs/ceremonies of
the Ancient Pueblo Peoples who once
lived there. She told us about why they chose these locations (for defense,
obviously) and what kinds of foods they ate and so on and so forth. (I would go
into more detail here, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of what she told us.)

“Just don’t lean against the rock wall on the edge of the dwelling,” she
added, “because it’s not very stable and people have fallen.”

Fortunately, I didn’t fall. That totally would have ruined
the whole trip.